How to transform your training, meeting or classroom into a playroom? The first thing is to unlearn what you have learned about content delivery and throw away your PowerPoint presentations. The re-design starts by thinking about intended purpose and impact of the intervention and what may be the best way to achieve that.

We have worked with Vlerick Business School in Belgium on learning innovation and created several business games and simulations together with the staff. One of them is Leonardo Meeus, an associate professor and Director of the Energy Center at Vlerick. “My first step was to go from traditional teaching to interactive teaching, which was already a massive change. Teaching interactively is one thing, but going from there to gamified teaching is another level. When you teach, everything goes through you. When you create a gamified experience, the players create their own insights.”

There has been a lot of talk about flipping the classroom or about moving from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side”. What is certain is that the shift from a focus on content delivery or push, to the creation of an experience, is now the reality for more and more learning professionals. We recently created an infographic about how players learn in games.

Like prof Meeus says, to design a game-based management training takes more than letting go of the content, it requires a creative mindset to think about different possibilities and the courage to try something new. No one can be a master to start with, and you can’t learn if you don’t try. Here are a few tips on how to get started.

5 Steps for Designing a Game-Based Learning Experience

Unlearn content delivery. Scrap PowerPoint, and try flipped learning for delivering your content outside the classroom and making space for reflection and application.

Start with Impact. Know your learners and their needs, be it back at the workplace or at the end of their studies.

Design for Play. Get creative and think of the possible processes learners could engage in, individually or in groups. What insights do learners need to acquire?

Borrow ideas. Like most ideas, many existing games are based on earlier inventions. Look at your favourite games or go online for further resources.

Experiment. Learning through trial and error is a part of any game. Go ahead and do the same. It might just make your own journey more playful and impactful.

Timo is the Creative Lead of World of Insights. Feel free to comment here or if you would like to talk more about gamifying your training, please get in touch.